


Something Else Altogether

by quantumducky



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: ADHD Cecil Palmer, Autistic Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Canon Compliant, Compliant with It Devours!, Developing Relationship, M/M, Missing Scenes, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Season/Series 01, me? projecting? never, shoutout to the novels for giving me names for the other scientists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: Moving to a place like Night Vale would be a big adjustment for anyone, and it doesn't help when basic laws of the universe aren't behaving themselves and no one will take your warnings of impending doom seriously. There simply isn't time to worry about things like "your feelings," or "that cute radio host who keeps saying weird things about your hair," and especially not "your feelings about that cute, weird radio host." Carlos is definitelywaytoo busy to be thinking about anything likethat.(Or: Carlos's first year in Night Vale, from his perspective. Follows canon events with a few added scenes.)
Relationships: Carlos & His Scientists, Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 53
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to post a chapter of this every Saturday until it's complete, although the start of fall semester in a few weeks might interrupt.
> 
> Also, as of writing this I'm only up to the beginning of season 3 in my relisten with vague recollections of events further on, so if I'm contradicting any later information here, that's why.

The day Carlos and his team of scientists arrived in Night Vale was a very busy one. First, there were things to set up in the lab they were renting in the science district, next to Big Rico’s Pizza- breakers and humming electrical equipment and flasks of bubbling liquids and so on. Then there were personal matters to take care of, each of them needing to unpack their boxes of belongings in the various temporary homes they’d found around town. None of the scientists were especially keen to bother with that right away, though, because once the lab was more or less in order, they could start doing _science._ There had been… a few issues at first, mostly with territorial local scientists who didn’t appreciate outsiders coming in and trying to study the same things _they_ were studying, but Carlos had made sure to deal with that sort of thing ahead of time. It helped that they’d been invited by the Night Vale community college, giving them some additional legitimacy in the many, suspiciously watching eyes of the rather insular small town. As it was, no one had given them much trouble, and now that they were finally here- in _the_ most scientifically interesting town in America- they were all very excited to get to work.

Carlos was slightly less excited to speak to everyone at the town meeting he had to call before he could do anything else. That wasn’t to say he felt _negatively_ about it. He liked telling people about science, and didn’t mind public speaking in general, especially when it involved talking about science. He was just slightly less excited to _talk_ about science than he was to actually _do_ science, and he had to do the one thing before he could get to the other. As the head of the team, he frequently had to do things which were not science, but were necessary.

And so, while everyone else went out to find things to investigate around town, Carlos stood at a podium at the front of a meeting room in City Hall. He introduced himself, as well as the other members of his team who were not present to introduce themselves. He told the people of Night Vale- or, at least, those of them who were there to hear it- how wonderful and fascinating their town was, and how excited the scientists were to be welcomed into it and allowed to explore its mysteries. He was surprised by how excited his audience seemed to be in return; most people to whom he tried to explain his work listened with less rapt attention and more blank confusion after a certain point. Maybe it was the novelty of having new visitors in a place where that rarely happened. Maybe they were all just very interested in science. He knew it was probably the former, but hoped for the latter anyway. When he finished his speech and stepped down from the podium, a man who had been sitting in the front row and looking _especially_ interested came up to introduce himself.

“Wow,” he said, shaking Carlos’s hand and grinning. He was wearing bedazzled fingerless leather gloves, which made for an interesting handshake. “Science sure is cool. I’m Cecil, with Night Vale Community Radio. Would you mind telling me how you spell your name so I can get it right on air?”

Carlos did so before wondering why the correct spelling _mattered_ in radio, which was an audio-only medium. Cecil produced a small notepad from the pocket of a bright blue plastic raincoat with its sleeves cut off, and produced a ballpoint pen from apparently nowhere with which to write on it.

“Great. And, uh… how do you spell _scientist?”_

Carlos told him. After another moment, the notepad vanished back into his pocket and the pen just… _vanished,_ so quickly and completely that Carlos couldn’t be sure it had ever existed in the first place, let alone where it was now. Cecil saw him staring in confusion and winked.

“The Sheriff’s Secret Police can’t confiscate what they can’t find, or even be certain you were ever holding,” he whispered, “but you didn’t hear that from me, right?”

“…Right.”

“Anyway,” he continued at a normal volume, “if you have any scientific news that needs reporting, please, contact us at the station!” He handed Carlos a business card stamped with the NVCR logo.

“Oh, thanks!”

Cecil hesitated, glancing away, and then held out a second piece of paper. This one was just half a page from his notepad, torn out and folded in half, with a phone number scribbled on it. “And if you ever want to contact _me,_ you know, personally… well, that’s my personal number. You know. Just in case.”

He took it and nodded. He wasn’t sure what Cecil expected him to need that for, or why his face was slightly red now, but he said regardless, “Thanks.”

“Well, I’d better get back and report the news,” Cecil said quickly. “It was nice meeting you!”

“You, too.”

The radio host wasn’t the only one who had further questions for Carlos, or simply wanted to say hello to him in person, and he put the business card and Cecil’s phone number into the pocket of his lab coat and out of his mind for the moment. It was great that everyone was so friendly and welcoming, but wow, he didn’t normally talk to this many new people in a _week,_ much less a single hour, and it was a little overwhelming. He kept up with the whirlwind of interaction as well as he could. When he finally left City Hall, he found a message on his phone from Mark.

Apparently, while Carlos was busy with his meeting, his team had discovered a house in the Desert Creek housing development which did not exist.

It _seemed_ like it should have existed, the message went on to explain. Like, it was just right there when they looked at it, and it was between two other identical houses, so it would have made more sense for it to be there than not. After some preliminary tests, though, it seemed likely that it wasn’t really there, and would Carlos come look at it when he had time, please? It was sort of freaking them all out.

When he arrived at the address Mark had provided, he found several of the other scientists standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. As he was parking his car, one of them was nudged by another into walking halfway up to the door, but turned around and ran back before reaching it.

He got out and walked over to them. “What’s going on?”

They explained the situation again and showed him the tests they had run on the house. After performing a few experiments of his own, Carlos was forced to agree with their original assessment. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the house definitely did not exist… and _he_ didn’t want to go up and ring the doorbell any more than the rest of them did.

“I just don’t have time,” he explained as convincingly as possible. “I’ve got to call the radio station and tell them to warn people to stay away from this house, and then I need to check on the seismic monitoring station. If anyone else does it, though, I’ll give you five dollars,” he offered, and then walked around the other side of his car to make that call so that it would take slightly more effort for anyone to argue with him.

It wasn’t just an excuse; he really did need to check on the seismic monitoring station. He’d gotten another text just a minute ago, asking for his help to make sure everything was working properly, because the readings they were getting just didn’t seem right. And so he left them, still clustered together bickering on the sidewalk, and drove out to Route 800. When he got there… well, he almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He did believe it, in the end, but only after double- and triple-checking the monitors. He definitely didn’t _understand_ it. If there was nothing wrong with the equipment, then there must have been something _very_ wrong with the _town,_ in that it was currently failing to experience a level of seismic activity which should have been destroying buildings all over the place.

This was… well. As a scientist, he hesitated to say that anything was frightening, since that was a very subjective term. But it was definitely strange, and probably dangerous, and, speaking as himself rather than as the leader of a team of scientists, it scared him a lot. And until he could figure out why it was happening, all he could do was leave another message with the radio station and remind himself that, technically, this _was_ better than everything actually getting destroyed by an earthquake. Technically.

Between trying not to panic over what this might mean and the time it had taken to determine it was happening in the first place, most of the day was gone once he was done. He went home- or, at least, to the place he was currently staying- and halfheartedly tried to unpack for a while, then gave up and returned to the lab as the sun was nearing the horizon. He doubted he would find any answers tonight, but it might make him feel a little bit better if he could at least talk through the questions with someone other than himself. Maybe he should have guessed, he thought tiredly, that feeling better just wasn’t meant to be. By the time he got to the lab, he’d glanced at the clock on his dashboard and found himself with a new question: Why was the sun setting ten minutes _later_ than it had yesterday, when all natural laws he knew of dictated that- the summer solstice having passed- it should have been happening slightly _earlier_ each day?

Increasingly unsettled, he rushed into the lab and grabbed the first person he could find. “Connie, come with me.” He pulled her over to the window and pointed outside. “Look. The sun hasn’t set.”

She looked at it, then at him, and nodded vaguely. She wasn’t getting it.

“The sun hasn’t set,” he repeated, and gestured to the clock on the wall. This time, her eyes widened.

“That’s not right. It should have gone down-”

“Ten minutes ago. I know.”

“Maybe- I don’t know, maybe the clock is just wrong? Do we have any other clocks?”

They looked. Between the two of them and anyone else unlucky enough to be dragged into the search, they gathered every clock they could find- analog, digital, various people’s watches, cell phones which displayed the time- and piled them up on one of the tables in the lab. There were a lot, and none of them were perfectly accurate, but neither did any show a ten-minute difference with the one up on the wall near the window. None of them wanted to say what they were all thinking, which meant that, as the leader of the team, Carlos had to do it.

“It looks like,” he said, voice flat and resigned, “it might be the sun that’s wrong.”

He went over to the radio station in person this time, along with Connie and Nilanjana, who had volunteered to research the problem together. They also brought one of the clocks with them for demonstration purposes. It ended up distracting them more than it helped, and no one at the station seemed to think it was that big of a deal, so in those respects it was not a very productive trip. Carlos noticed something undefinably strange about the building, though- something that made him feel he should go back and investigate, even if he was close to his limit in terms of “things that make no sense encountered in one day.” If scientists went around ignoring things just because they didn’t think they would like what they learned from them, no one would ever learn anything at all. Some might argue that this would not be a bad thing, but Carlos disagreed.

So he returned to the radio station, by himself, in the dark, carrying a metal box covered in blinking lights. He was mostly able to avoid people who might ask him questions like “What are you doing?” or “Who even let you in here?” When he reached Cecil’s studio, however, he found that he was still there, about to wrap up his show for the day. Fortunately, there was a pre-recorded weather report on at the moment, so Carlos wouldn’t interrupt anything if he came in and waved his box around in the air to see what noises it would make. It had been making a lot of noises, and most of them didn’t mean anything good.

“Actually,” Cecil offered, “if you’re not too busy, you could stay for an interview when this ends? I’m sure everyone would love to hear from you personally, after all the science you’ve been telling us about today!”

Carlos shook his head without looking up from his device. “I am too busy. Sorry.”

“…What are you doing, by the way?”

“Testing for materials.” It would occur to him later that Cecil, not being a scientist himself, probably didn’t have any idea what that meant, but in the moment he was too preoccupied to consider it.

“Oh.”

There was _something_ in here, his instincts earlier hadn’t been wrong. He just needed to find it. He walked around the room, testing specific objects at random, and finally came to Cecil’s desk. Cecil was leaning on it, watching Carlos work and absently clicking his pen. Carlos held the box in his hand up to the microphone.

Oh, that was _not_ good. That was, in fact, very bad.

Cecil raised his eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

He needed to get out of here. _Everyone_ needed to get out of here. “It means you have to evacuate the station,” he said urgently. “Now.”

The radio host only frowned, making no move to get up or even to lean away from the _apparently incredibly dangerous_ microphone. “We can’t just leave,” he said. “That would be unprofessional.”

“Cecil, this is serious! Everyone here is in danger!”

He smiled. “Oh, Carlos. Everyone _anywhere_ is in danger, all the time. You’re a scientist, shouldn’t you know that?”

“Of course I know that, but-”

“I have to finish my show,” he insisted. “But I do appreciate your concern, and I’ll be sure to relay the message to everyone, if it makes you feel better.”

It didn’t, not very much, but he didn’t want to be in this room any longer than he absolutely had to. If he at least got the message out, maybe _someone_ here would be a little more sensible than Cecil and leave the building before it was too late. “Sure,” he agreed, and hurried out of the station.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events of episode 3 + a post-episode conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you don't even know how hard it was to keep myself from posting this early lol... thank you to maggie for beta reading this chapter!

Two months passed, and nothing had been solved in any meaningful way. The stress was beginning to take its toll on Carlos. Other things were also beginning to take their toll on Carlos, like the passage of time, and desert heat. It was very hot in Night Vale during the day. Unrelatedly, his bangs kept falling into his eyes. The combination of these factors led Carlos to decide that it was time he got a haircut.

It was a difficult decision, or at least, as difficult as anything so relatively unimportant could be. He liked the way his hair was now- it had been like that for a while, so he was attached to it in the same way he was attached to anything familiar, and it looked good, and was long enough to twist around his finger when he was thinking hard. Unfortunately, he did _not_ like it in that it made his head too warm, and got sweaty and stuck uncomfortably to the back of his neck, and was generally more work to take care of the more it grew out. Also, his hair ties kept disappearing, even when he was sure he’d left them _right there_ on the nightstand. He suspected this was a hint from the faceless old woman who secretly lived in his home. He was still trying to get used to that whole concept, so if she thought he needed to cut his hair, he would rather go along with it than risk making her angry.

The scientists, on that particular day, were gathered around examining a book. It had stopped functioning like a normal book that morning- along with all other books in Night Vale- and started functioning like an especially dangerous wild animal instead. Now that the book had been restrained, it was probably safe to let them keep studying it without him. Carlos left them to it and went looking for the nearest barbershop.

The first place he found was Telly’s, on the corner of Southwest 5th Street and Old Musk Road. Outside, there was a red and white spinning pole. Inside, there were posters of combs on the walls and, of course, Telly himself waiting for someone to need his services.

“So, how do you want it?” the barber asked, once Carlos was seated in his chair.

“I don’t know,” said Carlos. “I just want it shorter. It’s too hot around here for long hair, you know?”

“Sure, sure.”

Carlos took his glasses off and leaned back. Telly spent the entire haircut talking about baseball. Carlos didn’t really know anything about baseball, beyond the general concept of how it worked, and he knew even less about the local teams, but saying “hmm” and “yeah” whenever the person talking about it paused had served him well thus far in life, and he trusted it to work here too. It was also what other people usually did when he was talking about science, so it was only fair. He was mostly occupied with how weird it was to have a stranger’s hands so close to his face for so long.

When it was done, Carlos put his glasses back on. He ran his hand over the top of his head. Maybe he should have been more specific about the fact that, when he said _shorter,_ he hadn’t really been thinking _buzzcut._

“Do you like it? I hope so, because I can’t put it back!” Telly laughed. Carlos nodded slowly, which he took as an answer and started putting his tools away. “Have a good one, Mr. Scientist.”

Oh, well. It would grow out again before too long, and it wasn’t like he cared that much about his appearance. He didn’t have time, with all the science he had to do. It was definitely a _practical_ haircut, at least- and it felt nice when he rubbed his hand over it, too, so it wasn’t all bad. He just needed to get used to it. His head seemed so much lighter than before, it was weird. He felt off-balance on his way back to the lab, which was partially related to the change and partially related to the two different people who pointed at him and shouted “Interloper!” as he was walking. He’d been told that was normal, and didn’t necessarily mean they had a problem with him. It still made him nervous. Also, it didn’t necessarily mean they _didn’t_ have a problem with him, either, and he wasn’t going to stop and ask them.

“I got a haircut,” he announced when he walked back into the lab.

“We know,” said Luisa, before even looking at him. When she did look up, she winced. “Oh. That _is_ pretty bad.”

He rubbed his head again. He didn’t even like it that much himself, but still felt defensive. “What’s wrong with it?”

She shrugged. “It’s just not a good haircut. I mean, you should’ve heard Cecil going off on the barber a few minutes ago.” There was a small radio in the lab, because Cecil’s show was a good way to keep up with the news in case anything happened which was relevant to their work and/or threatening to their lives.

“Why would he talk about my hair on the news?” More to the point, he wanted to know why Cecil thought it was any of his business if he got a bad haircut, but that wouldn’t do much good to ask out loud. He’d noticed by now that the man was more or less incapable of getting through a broadcast without talking about something he shouldn’t. If he didn’t have enough impulse control to avoid subjects which were literally illegal, he probably couldn’t be expected to avoid subjects which were sort of rude, either.

“He does that kind of thing a lot. I think it’s just the way he is,” she said, unknowingly agreeing with his thoughts. She paused. “It sounds like he might be interested in you.”

He nodded. “Well, we are still new here. I guess that makes us interesting.” Although it must have been a pretty slow news day, if there was nothing more interesting for Cecil to report on than his hair.

Luisa rolled her eyes at him, but she did that a lot and it didn’t always mean anything, so he ignored it. After waiting a moment to make sure the conversation was over, he went into his office and started looking over the team’s notes about the book they had been studying all morning. It was interesting stuff. It was concerning stuff, as well, since it would be impossible to do any research using books until they were back to their normal, readable state. Carlos didn’t think about the unfortunate haircut again until an alarm on his phone went off, reminding him it was time to eat something other than the snacks he kept in the lab, and he ended up at Big Rico’s for dinner. It was the closest place, obviously- right next door. It was also illegal _not_ to eat there every week, so he might as well get that out of the way. Cecil walked in shortly after him, and he suddenly remembered to be a little embarrassed about how he looked.

His attention was on Cecil as soon as he saw him- trying to figure out why he looked like he’d just lost a fight, mostly- yet he was still startled when he approached the table where Carlos was sitting and asked, “Mind if I join you?”

“Oh- no, go ahead.” He gestured vaguely to the chair across from him, and Cecil smiled and sat down. “What happened to you? Are you okay? Sorry, you don’t have to tell me what happened unless you want to. I do want to know if you’re okay, though.”

“Aww, Carlos, it’s so nice of you to worry about me! I’m fine, just a little dispute with Station Management. Contract negotiations- you know how it is.”

“I don’t,” he pointed out, “know how it is. But I am glad you’re fine.”

Cecil then admitted, “It was sort of stressful… but I feel better now that I’ve seen you.” His expression changed as he continued, “Even if it means being reminded of what that horrible barber, Telly, did to your hair.”

Carlos tried to figure out if he was joking or serious. After a few seconds, he gave up on that and just asked: “Is that a joke?”

“What? No! I would never joke about such an awful crime.” Okay, so he was serious. Carlos was honestly not sure what to do with that.

He laughed awkwardly. “I mean, I’ve had better haircuts, but it’s not _that_ bad, is it?”

Cecil insisted, “It is unforgivable. To deprive you of your beautiful hair… and to deprive the rest of us of the ability to look at it…” He shook his head. As he talked, his leg started bouncing under the table, causing it to shake slightly.

“I did ask him to cut it. You realize that, right? He didn’t… sneak up on me with scissors or anything.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“I guess the fact that I _paid_ to look like this doesn’t really make it better,” he conceded, and paused. “Did I do something wrong?”

There were a lot of unspoken rules in Night Vale. That didn’t make it different from anywhere else, but Carlos hadn’t been here long enough to figure them all out yet. Maybe there was some kind of approval process people were supposed to go through before changing an aspect of their appearance. He hesitated to ask about these things normally, because half the time _that_ was frowned upon, too… but he’d talked to Cecil a few times since that first day, and he seemed trustworthy. He’d already been very nice about explaining the ban on writing implements and how to get around it. The team of scientists now made most of their official notes using oil pastels, which were legally classified as an art medium, and kept their pens and pencils carefully hidden.

“No!” Cecil said quickly. “No, you haven’t done anything wrong at all. What on earth makes you think that?”

“…Well, you seem really upset about my hair? So I was wondering if that was my fault for getting it cut.”

He shook his head. “It is not your fault.”

“Oh, that’s good to know.”

“I’m just upset on your _behalf,_ Carlos! You had such perfect and beautiful hair, and now… it’s all gone…” He shook his head and looked down at his pizza. In doing so, he seemed to remember he _had_ pizza in front of him, and took a bite of it.

He couldn’t figure out why Cecil apparently cared about this so much- more than he did himself- and it was starting to make him a little uncomfortable. “It’s okay, Cecil, really. It will grow back.”

Cecil just looked at him and shook his head again, slowly. He couldn’t talk while he was eating, so Carlos could only try to guess what significance that look was supposed to convey. He eventually came up with a theory that, considering how nice Cecil’s own hair always looked, maybe he was offended by bad haircuts as a general concept and hated seeing them happen. It was the simplest explanation he could come up with, and therefore the most likely to be true, unless that rule didn’t apply in Night Vale. He would have to look into that possibility when he had time. Either way, it was much better than the other theory he would rather _not_ consider: that he’d misjudged Cecil, and this was him being passive-aggressive or sarcastic or something. He didn’t _think_ it was anything like that, but he had been wrong about people before.

Right now, though, there was a lull in the conversation, which allowed Carlos’s mind to drift to the same thing it always did when nothing else demanded his attention: science. Conveniently, he would also really love to change the subject right about now. “Hey, do you remember how books stopped working this morning? Of course you do, sorry, that was a silly question.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cecil, leaning forward and nearly putting his elbow in his once-again-forgotten pizza slice. He twisted a ring, a thin silver band with the phases of the moon etched on its surface, around his index finger. His leg was bouncing again. “You told us you were studying one of them, right? What have you found?”

“Well, my team did a few experiments, like having someone poke the book with a yardstick while everyone else stood around the table with clipboards and wrote down what it did. You know, basic science stuff.”

Cecil nodded, wide-eyed. “That’s very brave of you. Books are dangerous even when they’re behaving normally. Please, be careful!”

“Don’t worry, we took plenty of safety measures. Scientists are always careful, especially when we’re doing experiments. We might get bad data otherwise. Anyway, we determined that the book was acting very similar to a certain local species of scorpion. Tomorrow we’re planning to catch one of those scorpions and run some more tests. If it turns out they can be domesticated, we might be able to start reading the books again, even if they won’t go back to normal.” A thought occurred to him, and he sighed. “On the other hand, we might wake up tomorrow and find out everything mysteriously resolved itself before we could figure it out. Again.”

Cecil tilted his head and paused his leg-bouncing. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing? I mean, then you wouldn’t have to bring a dangerous creature into your lab, and we could all go back to only fearing books the usual amount.”

“Sure. But what if it happens _again?”_ He spread his arms in the universal gesture of helpless confusion. “We still won’t know what caused it, and we won’t have any idea how to stop it. We can’t go through our lives not understanding anything, just hoping anything that goes wrong will put itself back to normal before everyone is dead!”

Cecil frowned slightly. “What are you talking about? Of course we can. I do that all the time.” He laughed under his breath without changing his expression. “Is this another one of those science things I don’t understand?”

Carlos deflated, putting his arms back down. “Yes. Maybe. Probably.” If he was raising his voice like that, it meant he was too stressed. He should go home and try to relax. Either the broken book would still be there tomorrow or it wouldn’t, and he couldn’t do anything about that. “Thanks for listening anyway.”

“Of course! It’s always a pleasure talking to you. In fact…” It seemed like he was about to say something else, but then he closed his mouth and shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll see you later- assuming we’re both still here to see and be seen.”

“Yeah. It was nice talking to you, Cecil.” He didn’t have the energy to smile at him in a way that would look at all genuine, so he just waved as he stood up and pushed his chair in. Apparently he had finished his pizza at some point without paying attention. “I’ll call you tomorrow if we learn anything else about the book situation.”

“I hope you do!” said Cecil immediately. “Learn something. I hope you’re able to learn something.”

Carlos made the automatic motion of running his hand through his hair, which of course didn’t work. “Me, too. Have a good night, Cecil.”

Cecil waved back to him as he turned to leave. “Goodnight!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Lights in Radon Canyon; Wheat & Wheat By-Products

The scientists didn’t figure out the books. In the end, they decided to go ahead and catch a scorpion anyway, just to make themselves feel better. Not much was learned about books from that effort, but a few things were learned about scorpions, so it wasn’t completely pointless. Anyway, there wasn’t much time to worry about that before some _new_ mystery appeared to worry about, which was replaced by something else without ever really being solved, and so on.

Right now, for example, there were lights in Radon Canyon.

Or rather, there _had_ been lights, that past weekend. Carlos didn’t know what they were or if they would come back. They might be dangerous: most things were, so it was a safe bet. He went to the radio station first thing Monday morning, as soon as there was anyone in it to talk to. He could have just called, but sometimes he felt like Cecil- or, you know, whoever else answered the phone, obviously there were more people in the station than just him, although Carlos had to admit he didn’t know any of their names- didn’t really hear what he was saying. It was easier to be clear about things in person, that was all. He definitely did not have any other reasons for wanting to go to the station.

When he got there, Cecil was preparing to start his show, but he dropped everything once he saw Carlos looking so serious.

“Carlos!” he said, hurriedly untangling himself from the wires of his headset and microphone as his notes and illegal pens went everywhere. It really would have made more sense to put everything down carefully instead of just dropping it, but Cecil did not always think through these things. “This is a surprise, what brings you here so early?”

“Science.” He would have thought that was obvious. “Look, I need you to ask your listeners if any of them saw a…” He checked his notes. “A series of bright, colorful flickers coming from Radon Canyon in the past couple of days. They would’ve also been accompanied by unintelligible noises, possibly some sort of… coded message, or, or signal-jamming technique. Can you ask everyone about that for me, Cecil?”

He ducked under his desk to retrieve something to write it down with and on. “Of course!” When he looked back up, he was smiling. He always seemed to be smiling when Carlos talked to him, even though Carlos rarely talked to him about anything that should have made anyone happy. “Can I get you to stay for an interview this time?”

Not that he wouldn’t like to, but… “No, sorry, I can’t. I need to figure this out as soon as possible. It could be something terrible. Maybe another day, when I’m less busy?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t take that long! But, if you’re sure…” He shifted his weight, drumming his fingers on the desk. “How do you _know_ it’s something terrible? I mean, the way you described it, it sounds sort of… pretty.” He shuffled the papers scattered on his desk into no particular order. “Have you been to Radon Canyon yet? I always thought it would be nice to take someone there, you know, look at the view and… well. I wonder if those lights will come back again next weekend? It would be cool to see them in person, right?”

It wasn’t news to him that Cecil had no healthy sense of self-preservation, but this was on another level. “I’m scared for you,” he found the words to tell him after a beat of staring. He wasn’t the only one who acted like that, though, was he? “Scared for _all_ of you,” he amended, “in your _strange_ town.” He sighed. “I have to go.”

It was _stressful,_ being the only person in town who ever seemed to care about unknown dangers that might kill everyone. He left quickly, pushing his fingers through his hair- it was still on the short side, but starting to grow out again- and drove away, back to the lab to see if he could figure anything out. Not necessarily the lights, even, just… _anything._ It would be a nice morale boost for everyone, if they could figure _something_ out.

It was difficult to focus on anything else, though, when he was waiting impatiently for a call from Cecil. His team was understanding about it, but eventually they let him know that pacing around and looking over their shoulders constantly was both unhelpful and annoying. He decided to get back in his car and drive out to Radon Canyon. Once the call did come, he would be in a better position to start investigating… and until then, he wouldn’t be in anyone’s way out here if he got out of his car and started walking in restless circles around it.

Finally, just as that was beginning to make him a little dizzy, his phone rang. He had been staring at it in his hand for the past ten minutes, so he answered immediately. “Cecil! Have you heard anything?”

“Carlos!” he replied just as quickly. “Yes, uh…” There were paper rustling noises in the background. “According to some of our listeners and the Parks Department, the lights and noises you were asking about came from the… Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular. Does that help?”

“Oh, god. There was a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular here over the weekend?”

“Is that… bad?”

“Very bad, Cecil.” He fumbled in the glove compartment for an old receipt he’d left there and began scribbling equations on the back using a half-melted crayon, which he probably _shouldn’t_ have left in the glove compartment. He did not like what he saw in the solutions. “It’s even worse than I imagined.”

“Oh,” said Cecil. “Well… I’m sure you’ll figure it out, like you always do!”

Was that sarcasm? It was so hard to tell, especially over the phone. If Cecil was being earnest, then Carlos wasn’t sure what team of scientists _he_ had been watching. They’d been here for months now, and they still barely knew anything. Every new piece of information only told them the same thing: Night Vale was an incredibly dangerous place where nothing made sense and even the most basic laws of the universe couldn’t be assumed true. It seemed to actively resist being understood. Anyone less stubborn would have given up and left by now, and they probably would have been a lot safer.

“By the way,” Cecil added, “speaking of, uh… weekends… what about _this_ weekend?”

Carlos was only half listening at this point, and wasn’t sure what _this_ weekend had to do with _anything._ Hopefully that wasn’t meant to imply there was _another_ Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular scheduled. That would be a disaster. “What?” he said distractedly. “Sorry, Cecil, I have to go. This is really important. If there’s something else you needed to tell me, just text me or call again and leave a message, okay? I’ll get back to you when I can.” He hung up without waiting for an answer and reached into the back seat for a pair of safety goggles and a clipboard with a small stack of papers on it, full of charts and graphs and such. He was going to investigate this with all the resources he had.

But even with all the instruments of science at his disposal, he… didn’t exactly solve anything.

By the time he returned to the lab, the situation was already as resolved as it ever would be. The City Council’s public denial of the very _existence_ of Pink Floyd, let alone the possibility that they had misused municipal funds to pay for some combination of necromancy and a private concert, raised more questions than it answered. However, those questions had more to do with _political_ concerns than scientific ones, so the whole team was relieved to hear that, whatever had taken place in Radon Canyon over the weekend, it wasn’t their problem. Science couldn’t solve everything, after all. You had to pick your battles.

Even knowing that, Carlos didn’t feel much better. It was his job to find answers. What good was he to anyone if he couldn’t figure out any of Night Vale’s dangers until they’d already done their damage and vanished again? There was no real crisis this time, but they couldn’t always be so lucky.

It stayed in the back of his mind until a few weeks later, when Cecil came around to the lab early in the morning. Somehow, he was already as cheerful and well put together as always, while Carlos was still trying to finish waking up… and he was asking about earthquakes. Carlos blinked at him, trying to catch up with what he was saying, and hoped he didn’t look as much of a mess as he felt.

“Apparently, we were at the epicenter of an earthquake just last week which measured 9.7 on the Richter scale! Now, I don’t know what that means exactly, but _I_ sure didn’t feel anything. You told us about that other earthquake thing a while back, so- do you know anything about this one?” He looked around. “I love your lab by the way, it’s so… science-y. What _is_ all this stuff?”

“Don’t touch anything,” Carlos warned him, and he quickly pretended he hadn’t been about to. “There are some delicate experiments in progress here.”

“Right! Sorry, I should have thought of that.”

“It’s fine. You were asking about earthquakes.” He went over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a folder of seismograph readings. “It looks like… oh. Hmm.” That didn’t make any sense, and he had no idea what it meant. He needed to have _some_ kind of answer for Cecil, though. A good scientist never left a question unanswered, even if the only one they ended up giving was a more professional-sounding version of _I don’t know._ Unfortunately, it was too early in the morning for him to actually come up with anything like that. He tried anyway.

“Well, according to this, it’s, uh… the readings…” He gestured vaguely with the papers in his hand and gave up, shaking his head and sighing. It looked like he would be spending his day on this, which was sure to be frustrating. And now Cecil was saying something about his shirt looking good on him- which he didn’t have any response to, because how was that relevant? He was probably just being nice; if either of them looked good right now, it was _him._ Carlos pulled his attention back and tried to finish the conversation before it could drift again. “I’ll look at my notes and computer models,” he said, walking Cecil back to the door, “and see if I can figure out what’s going on. If I learn anything, you’ll be the first one I tell- after my team, obviously.”

“Oh- uh, good luck! And thanks!” Cecil took the hint and left him alone to get started. It had been a while since Carlos last thought about the mystery of Night Vale’s earthquakes. There hadn’t been time, with all the crises that popped up on a weekly basis.

There also wasn’t going to be time now.

He’d barely made any progress when people started screaming outside. Before he could finish getting up to see what was happening, one of the other scientists knocked loudly on his office door.

“You have to come see this!”

“What’s going on?” He hurried out and saw everyone staring at a table. Actually, it was everything _on_ the table they were interested in. This consisted of a paper plate, a small pile of deli meat and cheese (on the plate), and a couple of three-foot-long green snakes (too large to be confined by the plate; also, venomous). The scientists were holding their clipboards up to write on, but also kind of as shields, just in case the snakes got tired of exploring the table and decided to shake things up by attacking someone. Carlos stood in his doorway and waited for someone to offer an explanation.

Mostly, what he got was helpless shrugs. It took a few seconds for someone to admit, “I don’t know, I just- I brought a sandwich back from that place down the street, and when I wasn’t looking, the bread turned into snakes!”

Carlos probably should have had something to say about bringing food into the lab, but there were more pressing issues. “Okay,” he said. “Find a way to, I guess, contain them?” Glancing outside, he realized it hadn’t been an isolated incident. “We need to warn people about this. I’ll-”

“Don’t worry about that,” someone else interrupted. “Some of the others went down to the radio station as soon as it happened. …Well, they ran out the door in that general direction, anyway. We all _assumed_ that was where they were going.”

“Oh.” That was a good thing, right? One less thing he needed to worry about. “Okay. Great. I’ll start studying what happened here, then.”

He had, he thought to himself as he gathered equipment to do some tests on the snakes, absolutely no reason to feel disappointed. He probably should have been sending someone else to the station all along, so he’d have more time for the actual science. Why _did_ he keep doing that himself?

One of the snakes tried to escape as they were wrangling it into a cage. Carlos thought back to Cecil coming over to the lab earlier. Had he made it back in time to be safe? Were things turning into snakes in the station right now, too? Hopefully not, but there was no way for him to know. Fine, he would admit it: he really wished he could’ve gone over there with the news himself, if only so he would be sure of whether Cecil was okay. And it would’ve been nice, just to see him.

A closer examination of the table, once the snakes had been removed, revealed small puddles of water and canola oil and a scattering of powdery substances, which were analyzed and seemed to consist of sugar, salt, and yeast. It appeared to be only the _flour_ in the bread- and, as far as they could tell, in any other food containing wheat- which had transformed into snakes, leaving the other ingredients unsure of what to do with themselves. Carlos could relate. He had an urgent job to do here, and yet his thoughts kept returning to Cecil and… well. The reason he wanted to be at the station with him so badly, which he was embarrassed to admit to even in his own head.

There was no point indulging those kinds of thoughts about him. It wasn’t like he had time for a relationship anyway, or, frankly, enough confidence to do anything about it even if he did. Sure, he’d heard a few comments from his colleagues about “that radio host with a crush on you,” but they’d outright told him they were only teasing. There was no way that was actually _true._ It wouldn’t have made sense.

It wasn’t like Carlos considered himself unattractive or anything, but he wasn’t vain enough to think he was the best-looking person in the whole town, either- like, what did that even mean, objectively? Nothing, right? And if it couldn’t be measured objectively, it didn’t exist, as far as he was concerned. Anyway. Someone with Cecil’s voice and charisma and cuteness level surely could have dated anyone he wanted to, assuming that person was attracted to men in the first place. Which was more likely: that he had been crushing on Carlos, who hadn’t really communicated any interest in return, for half a year without ever directly saying anything to him about it… or that he was just friendly, and a little weird, and there was nothing more to it? (That was a rhetorical question. He had already decided it was definitely the second one.)

Also, studying the snakes wasn’t going super well. The main problem was that they were no longer snakes at all, but angry spirits made of pure energy, which were a lot harder to put in a box or even hold onto. They were trying to set up an electric field to contain them, but it was hard when the spirits kept breaking things. Carlos was not proud of it, but he and most of the other scientists ended up hiding in his office, while a few who were on the wrong side of the room for that ran outside instead and went to bring this new update to those who had left earlier. By the time they dared to emerge, the spirits were gone- and a lot of people were dead.

Carlos felt horrible. They had tried to stop this, and failed, and people had _died._ He shouldn’t have let his mind wander so much. Maybe if he had been more focused… then again, maybe not. Regardless, he wasn’t going to risk letting it happen again. From now on, he promised himself, his work would have his full attention. No more distractions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with this chapter, the fic is halfway done! :)
> 
> next up: the phone call


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Phone Call

Statistically speaking, the continued existence of the town of Night Vale was not _impossible,_ but it also wasn’t very likely. Carlos entertained the thought that it did not, in fact, exist, and was just a hallucination everyone in it had been collectively having for years. That would explain a lot. Of course, he couldn’t actually prove it, so he continued as he had been, struggling again and again to understand this place before it killed him. It was the middle of winter when he finally had something like a breakthrough.

It was about the clocks. He’d always thought that would be important, but it had taken a while to get anywhere with it between all the other things that had happened since they first noticed something was strange. For a while now, the team had been keeping track of what time the sun rose and set each day. There wasn’t much of a pattern- some days, it didn’t rise _at all,_ let alone at the expected time- but it had led him to a thought: maybe it wasn’t just the sun that was affected. He’d looked into it, not expecting to find much, but the math checked out- or rather, conspicuously didn’t. According to his calculations, time was actually passing _slower_ in Night Vale than anywhere else.

He felt bad about bothering anyone at such an odd hour on a Sunday- but then again, it didn’t look like that really meant anything, right? Besides, this was important. He needed to start getting the word out as soon as possible. With only a little hesitation, he pulled up the contact he’d saved in his phone months ago and called Cecil.

He picked up after the first ring. “Hello?”

“I need to talk to you,” Carlos said, forgetting the usual phone call pleasantries in his excitement. “This is important.”

“Um… okay.” There were sounds of movement in the background, which hopefully meant he was getting situated to listen and take notes. And which hopefully _didn’t_ mean he was multitasking and not giving this his full attention.

“Cecil,” he said, just in case he wasn’t listening already. “Cecil. I think time is slowing down in Night Vale.”

There was a pause, and then Cecil said, “Oh?”

Carlos nodded, mostly for his own benefit, and pulled a few specific pages of notes to the top of the pile in front of him. “Last week: seven days, 24 hours each day, 60 minutes in each hour. That’s 10,080 minutes in a week, right?”

“Uh huh? Go on…” It was good to hear Cecil so engaged. He never seemed to take these things as seriously as he should; maybe this time would be different.

“Well, I ran some figures, and during that same amount of time in Night Vale, 11,783 minutes elapsed everywhere else in the world. That’s more than a full day longer. I don’t know what’s happening.” He tugged on his hair in agitation and waited for a response.

Cecil was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “Neat!”

Carlos put his hand over the receiver and sighed. He carefully did not allow himself to think that had been cute.

“Do you… want to get together sometime and talk about this? It sounds fascinating,” Cecil offered. As nice as that sounded, Carlos doubted it would actually move his research forward, which meant he didn’t have the time for it.

“No. I just need you to help get the word out. Ask if anyone has noticed a… massive time-shift, or, you know, anything like that.”

“Sure, of course. Anything for- uh, the scientific community!”

“Thanks,” he said, and hung up. Cecil might not know much about science, but he was a good reporter. Carlos trusted him to do as he’d asked.

His show wouldn’t be on again until Monday, though, so there was no reason to just wait around until then. Carlos went back to his current work, which involved taking all the clocks he could find and disassembling them. So far, he had found that at least two of the clocks in the lab were perfectly hollow inside. Further investigation was needed to determine how many of them were like that.

The clocks occupied him all weekend. It was difficult, obviously, to prove that _absolutely no_ clocks had anything inside them, and even more difficult to prove they had always been empty and this wasn’t a recent development. When he finally thought he had enough evidence, he called Cecil again immediately. It was only after he didn’t pick up that Carlos realized it was the middle of the day and he was probably busy. He left a voicemail anyway, hoping he wasn’t bothering him too much and that Cecil would be able to check it soon.

“Cecil, sorry to bother you. I need you to get the word out that clocks in Night Vale are not real. I have not found a single real clock. I have disassembled several watches and clocks this week and all of them are hollow inside. No gears, no crystal, no battery or power source. Some of them actually contain a gelatinous gray lump that seems to be growing hair… and teeth.” He glanced over at _that_ small pile and made a face. “I need to know if all clocks are this way, Cecil. This is ver-”

He froze as movement registered in his peripheral vision.

“…There’s something at my door, Cecil. I need to go, okay? I’ll call you back in… well, I don’t know.” He could only hope he would be able to call back at all, and not get killed by whatever was outside.

Moving slowly, he made his way to the window and knelt in front of it, where he could look out while staying mostly hidden himself. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look, though. It occurred to him that he might feel better if he were still on the phone. Then, if something did happen, at least someone would know about it, right? He turned his phone’s volume as low as possible and restarted the call.

“There’s a man in a jacket holding a leather suitcase outside my door, Cecil,” he whispered. “He’s not knocking, he’s just… standing in front of my door. I can’t make out his face. I’m peering through a crack in the living room blinds- oh no, he saw me!” He ducked below the window, hanging up reflexively in his panic.

He pressed his back to the wall and tried to form a plan. The next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of his living room.

What had he been doing just now? Talking to someone? Maybe, although he couldn’t remember who. It must not have been too important. He glanced down at his phone, which he was holding, and saw Cecil’s contact still open. Right, he had promised to call him back after… well, whatever he had just done.

“Sorry about that, Cecil,” he said after being sent to his voicemail again. “I forget what I was doing. I think somebody came over… but I don’t remember who or what for.” He shook his head at himself. “Anyway, I need to meet you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon? You have a contact number for the mayor and someone with the police, right? It’s important that I find them. And again, can you get the word out on your radio show about the clocks?”

There was a vague sense in the back of his mind that this wasn’t what he had originally intended to say to Cecil. Like a feeling that he was forgetting something, but… the inverse of that? It didn’t make any more sense in his head than it would have if he’d tried to explain it to someone else, so he brushed it off as one of those weird brain glitches and didn’t think any more of it. He sat on his couch, set the phone down next to him, and waited for Cecil to have time to call him back.

He didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes, as it turned out. As soon as he answered, Cecil was talking too quickly for him to really process.

“Oh, sorry!” He cleared his throat. “I would be happy to meet you tomorrow afternoon, Carlos. I’m sure you want something sort of low-key, how does coffee sound? Around, say, one-thirty?”

“That sounds good. Oh, and before I forget- could you also ask your listeners for me if anyone has ever actually _seen_ the Night Vale clock tower? I mean, I was looking for it all of yesterday to compare it with the other clocks, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

There was a pause. “Of course they haven’t seen it,” said Cecil, as if that should have been obvious. “It’s invisible and constantly teleporting. _Seeing_ it would just be ridiculous.” He huffed and collected himself. “I’ll mention it anyway, though. Since you asked.”

“Right.” Carlos sighed to himself. “It’s invisible. Of course it is.”

“Exactly! Everyone knows _that._ I bet you just weren’t thinking, happens to me all the time. You wouldn’t believe the amount of things _I’ve_ said wrong- at least you’re not on air when it happens!” There was silence for a moment. “Well, as much as I’d like to keep talking to you, I do have a show to get back to soon. Unless you had anything else to tell me about…?”

“No, that was all. Sorry- I didn’t mean to interrupt your show.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry, I’m the one who couldn’t wait to call you back!” Cecil laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

He confirmed, “One-thirty tomorrow.”

“Wonderful! It’s a date! Goodbye, Carlos,” he practically sang, and ended the call.

Carlos lowered his phone and stared at it for a while. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Cecil… didn’t know very much about science at the best of times, a fact he’d been aware of for a while, and maybe it would have been better to call someone who would understand the situation. He didn’t actually _know_ anyone like that in Night Vale, though- not other than his own team of scientists, at least. Other than them, Cecil was probably the one person in town he knew the best. He wouldn’t _get_ it, but he would listen anyway.

And he could probably, hopefully, get him in touch with the mayor and the SSP. That was very important, even if Carlos couldn’t seem to remember why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: coffee, and the only chapter of this fic with no dialogue taken from the actual show


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a date?

Carlos met Cecil for coffee the following afternoon, just as they’d agreed. It was a cozy little café, with seasonal drinks written up on a chalkboard and quiet jazz playing from speakers in the ceiling. An agent from a vague, yet menacing government agency watched the other patrons through a newspaper with eye holes cut out of it. Carlos tried to get there a little early so he would have time to prepare himself, but it seemed Cecil had thought of the same thing, and he had barely started laying out his charts and equations when the other arrived.

Even distracted as he was, he couldn’t help but notice Cecil’s _unusual_ choice of clothing- even for him. It was very… flashy. Carlos was pretty sure this was the Night Vale version of dressing up, so maybe he was going to some kind of fancy event later. It wasn’t as if Carlos needed to know, or had much spare attention to care. He was busy talking and gesturing to his papers before Cecil had even finished sitting down across from him.

“Look, I brought one of the clocks to show you, Cecil-” he pulled it out of a large pocket in the lab coat he was wearing today, which was one of his nicer ones- “and there are a few more in my car if you want to see those, too. I didn’t bring any of the ones with the grey stuff inside, though, because those are gross and I did not want to touch them any more than I had to. I _do_ have pictures of them on my phone.”

Cecil nodded slowly, looking at the papers in the way that generally indicated having absolutely no idea what Carlos was talking about. “Okay… Uh, do you want to get that coffee now? I can order for you, if you’re…” He gestured to everything. “Busy.”

He looked up and blinked, readjusting to the idea that coffee, as well as anything else other than notes about clocks, existed. “Oh! Sure, if you don’t mind. Could you get me one of those caramel things?”

“Of course!” He practically skipped over to the counter and got in line. He was in a really good mood today, huh? Carlos wished he could say the same for himself, but the whole time situation was so concerning, he couldn’t relax. He tried to organize the pile of notes on the table so that there would be somewhere to put their drinks by the time Cecil came back.

A few minutes went by which felt more like a few seconds. That could have been related to the thing with time not passing normally in Night Vale, or it might have just been Carlos, getting absorbed in what he was doing again. After all, if he wanted people to take him seriously, he needed to have his notes in order before he started explaining. He managed not to be startled when Cecil came back and set his coffee down in front of him.

“Caramel latte for you… and I decided to try the raspberry mocha, you know, since they only do it in February and all.” He took a sip, made a face and reported, “It’s still very hot.”

Carlos laughed softly and pulled his own drink closer, not trying to drink it yet. “How much was it? So I can pay you back,” he clarified when Cecil didn’t say anything.

He frowned. “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that. Let me pay for you.”

“Well, if you’re sure… thank you, Cecil, that’s so nice of you!” He tried to taste his coffee, forgetting how hot it was, and immediately burned his mouth. Hoping it wasn’t too obvious that Cecil had distracted him into forgetting to wait for it to cool off, he coughed and sat up straight.

“Cecil,” he started to say. Cecil started to say _his_ name at the same time, though, and they both got sort of confused for a few seconds.

“You go first,” said Cecil, once they had verbally untangled themselves.

“Right. Cecil. I need to ask you something very important.”

He clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward, almost holding his breath. “What is it?”

“Can you call the mayor for me? I need to speak with her, urgently.”

Cecil blinked. His posture deflated in one long exhale. “…What? Why? I mean, yes, I can, but- what is this about, Carlos? What’s going on?”

Carlos gave him a look of confusion. “The clocks, Cecil. Time, and how it isn’t working. The same thing I’ve been talking about this whole time.” He paused. It seemed like there had been some kind of miscommunication here, but he still had no idea what it was. “What did _you_ think I was talking about?”

“I…” Cecil drooped further, frowning. He looked oddly small- he was sad, wasn’t he? Disappointed? Carlos felt awful and wished he could fix it, but he didn’t know what exactly the problem was yet- not until he finished talking, at least. “I sort of thought we were on a date,” he admitted quietly, voice rising at the end like a question.

“Oh,” said Carlos. He couldn’t fix that. “Oh. Cecil…”

“Don’t worry about it.” His voice was a little choked. He wouldn’t look at Carlos anymore. “It was my mistake, it’s- it’s fine. I just remembered I have to- it’s almost the end of my lunch, you know, so…” He made a sound that Carlos could only guess was supposed to be a laugh, although he couldn’t fathom what he was laughing at, and stood up. “I’ll call the mayor for you, okay? I’ll tell her to come meet you here.”

“I can pay you for the coffee,” he said helplessly. It was all he could think of to say.

“No. No, please don’t do that, Carlos, I’m- I have to go.”

And he was gone, before Carlos could decide whether or not he should be stopping him. He could just barely see him outside, leaning against the wall of the building, folded in on himself as he put his phone up to his ear. He was probably really upset now, all because Carlos hadn’t considered that he might have meant it literally when he said _it’s a date._ If someone who knew what they were doing had been in this situation, he suspected they would have gone after Cecil and… well, he didn’t know, that was the problem. They would have done _something_ to fix this. Then again, that hypothetical socially competent person wouldn’t have messed it up in the first place. By the time he had a mental script ready to at least assure him things didn’t have to be weird between them after this, Cecil was already long gone. Hopefully _not_ to tell his listeners about this absolute disaster of a meeting.

Carlos didn’t have time to worry about that, though, because he’d kept his word before leaving. Pamela Winchell was on her way to hear his concerns, and he needed to give her scientific facts, not an emotional breakdown. He would worry about it later.

…Later arrived much _sooner_ than he would have preferred.

Oh, sure, meeting with the mayor and then the sheriff was the same drawn-out bureaucratic waste of time anyone would expect it to be- so boring, in fact, that he already couldn’t remember some of what had happened. That still didn’t mean Carlos was emotionally ready to think about Cecil again by the time he got home.

Well, not _home,_ exactly- he was in the lab, actually, at ten in the evening, trying his best not to think about _anything._ It wasn’t working. He couldn’t get himself to focus, and when he couldn’t focus on science, something was _really_ wrong.

He’d been so very wrong to conclude before that Cecil didn’t have romantic feelings for him; that much was obvious. Once he acknowledged _that,_ he also had to admit it probably would have been obvious a little _sooner_ if he hadn’t put so much energy into not thinking about it. If he’d been more honest with himself, maybe he could have avoided hurting Cecil’s feelings so badly today. It wasn’t really anything _he_ had done, obviously- Cecil could have asked, too, before assuming the meeting was a date… but Carlos hadn’t been affected by finding out he thought that in the same way Cecil had been affected by finding out it wasn’t. He felt responsible, if only by virtue of being the least hurt. He sat at the least experiment-cluttered table they had in the lab, staring blankly at a paper cup with Cecil’s name on it whose contents had long since become cold and gross. Cecil hadn’t taken it with him, and it wouldn’t have felt right to just throw it away when he left.

“I don’t know what to do,” Carlos told it. “I… I know it wasn’t exactly my _fault,_ but it seemed like he was really upset. I feel terrible and I don’t know what to do about it.”

The hours-old raspberry mocha didn’t answer, of course, but it was always easier to talk himself through a problem when he had someone or something to talk to, and no one else was in the lab right now. He kept going.

“I guess I should say something to him, I just don’t know what. I don’t want him to think I’m not talking to him because he made me uncomfortable, or anything like that.” He’d known Cecil long enough by now to know he didn’t deal well with feeling rejected. If Carlos didn’t offer some kind of reassurance, he would probably worry their entire friendship was ruined now. “It would be so much easier if I could… you know, tell him I feel the same way and ask him out on a _real_ date. Well, not easy, that would still be really hard, but simple. As simple as anything that involves communication between two human beings who will only ever understand each other imperfectly _can_ be. You know what I mean.” The coffee cup had no idea what he was talking about, but neither did Carlos, really, so that was fine.

He sighed. “I can’t afford that kind of distraction, though. I can’t be starting a new relationship when so much depends on my work. We’re close to solving this time thing, I’m sure of it, and I just- I have to stay focused. Cecil is- I mean, he’s _amazing,_ obviously, but… it’s just not a good time.” He set his phone on the table, next to the cold coffee, and stared at it for a moment. “So… should I tell him that?”

It didn’t have an answer for him any more than he had an answer for himself. Carlos was a firm believer in telling the truth as much as possible, but this might be one of those times it only made things worse. The last thing he wanted was to upset Cecil more than he already had, and maybe he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. If he wanted to know how Carlos felt, he would ask, right?

Also, he had to admit, he didn’t really _want_ to tell him. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to officially rule out the possibility of dating Cecil, even if it wasn’t likely to be a good idea any time soon. Maybe that was selfish of him, but it was the truth.

He stared into space for a moment, his hands wrapped tight around the paper cup, and then his head landed gently on the table in front of it. “So I’m back where I started,” he concluded, muffled. “I don’t know what to say to him.”

Not saying anything still wasn’t an option, though. He turned his head to the side and finally, reluctantly picked up his phone. _I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,_ he texted Cecil, _and for upsetting you. I hope you’re doing okay._ He felt like a coward for being so vague, but at least he’d said something.

A few minutes went by before Cecil responded. _Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. It wasn’t your fault. How was your meeting with the mayor? [emoji of a clock with its hands torn off, a dark liquid dripping from the center of the face where they should have been attached]_

Carlos smiled. It was cute how Cecil always used emojis in his texts. The addition of something unnecessary made them feel extra thoughtful.

And it seemed like he was right: Cecil didn’t want to talk about what had happened right now. Well, Carlos would be happy to respect that. He was just glad to hear Cecil was okay. He typed out his account of the meeting for him, which had honestly gone pretty well, considering. Mayor Winchell had only interrupted him to hold an emergency press conference twice, and when the sheriff showed up, he’d politely pretended not to notice that most of the scientists’ notes had clearly been made with things it was illegal for them to possess. The conversation went on like that for a little while, just the two of them talking like nothing had happened, and Carlos felt much better when it was over.

Everything seemed to be fine between him and Cecil, which was a huge relief on its own. It was also a relief that he didn’t have to explain his concerns around dating yet. When it came up, he told himself, he would be honest- he wasn’t avoiding the subject or anything- but he didn’t think he should be the one to start that conversation. He was sure Cecil would be ready to talk about it before too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: oh you know
> 
> in other news i reached episode 100 a couple days ago and yes i cried


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Year Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're here folks... the last chapter

Weeks passed, then months, and Cecil never once brought up the not-date, or anything even remotely connected to romance. Well, there was Valentine’s Day, but in Night Vale that seemed to be more of a scheduled natural disaster than anything else. Carlos started to have second thoughts, as time went on, about his resolution not to be the first one to mention it. He wasn’t sure Cecil was _ever_ going to say anything, and he felt just a little awkward in all their interactions, knowing it still wasn’t resolved. There was always some good excuse to decide it could wait, though, something more important that needed doing at the time, and he never got around to _actually_ changing his mind.

Nothing changed for a long time, and then, one day- as these things tend to happen- it did.

Cecil sent him a letter. His heartrate increased as he picked it up and opened it, wondering if he had chosen this method of communication to finally address the subject they had both spent so long delicately avoiding. It wasn’t anything like that. It _was_ an invitation, written on official NVCR stationery in the neatest version of Cecil’s handwriting that existed. There would be a small ceremony to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the day Carlos and his team of scientists first came to Night Vale.

A _very_ small ceremony. Cecil hadn’t actually mentioned anyone else who would be present, other than the two of them. He also hadn’t been very clear on whether or not it was meant to be part of his show. Carlos was having a difficult time deciding whether to be nervous. He couldn’t tell if this was Cecil just being Cecil, or… trying to orchestrate an excuse to talk to him, privately and face-to-face. He was going to show up either way, of course, but it would have been nice to know what to prepare himself for.

He did his best, at least. When the day of the anniversary came, he had a carefully selected Ceremony Outfit laid out on his bed and a few different scripts in mind, depending on what Cecil’s intentions for the event turned out to be. He didn’t think there was anything else he could do after that, so he went over to the lab- in his everyday clothes, so as not to risk spilling chemicals on the Outfit- and did some science to keep himself occupied until it was time to go.

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex transformed suddenly into an impending warzone.

Carlos had never been entirely convinced by Teddy Williams’s claims of a secret civilization underneath his bowling alley which was preparing to attack Night Vale. Secret civilization, _maybe,_ although it honestly seemed like the kind of thing that might be invented as a marketing scheme, but even if it existed, there was no evidence to suggest it was hostile.

If there _was_ a secret civilization hidden deep beneath the bowling alley, though, he doubted even a generally peaceful one would react well to the citizens of Night Vale above them gearing up for battle.

It had become clear at this point that Carlos was the only one with any common sense around here at least, oh, half the time. (The other half was split evenly between occasions where someone else displayed common sense and occasions where Carlos himself had none.) That was why he rushed off to the Desert Flower as soon as he heard the news, hoping he wouldn’t be too late to prevent bloodshed- and forgetting entirely about the _other_ place he was supposed to be going soon.

When he reached the bowling alley, he could hardly see what was happening through the growing crowd of people who were _also_ trying to see what was happening. Most of them recognized Carlos by now, though, and also recognized the look on his face that meant he was about Important Scientific Business. Within a few seconds, the throng of curious onlookers parted, allowing him to reach a second throng of armed militiapeople. They weren’t as easy to push past as the first group, so he was forced to stop and talk to them.

“What’s going on here?” he asked the nearest person, a woman holding a very large knife.

She jerked her head towards the pin retrieval area of lane five. “Haven’t you heard? There’s a secret civilization down there, and they’re about to come up and wage war on us. We’re here to stop ‘em.”

“Oh, for… let me through. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. _Someone_ has to.”

“What? Hold on, Teddy Williams said not to let anyone-”

Carlos was already past her, and the militia was too surprised by anyone even _wanting_ past them to stop him. “Teddy Williams,” he shouted over his shoulder, “is _deranged.”_

“Oh, yeah?” he heard shouted angrily from behind him- by Teddy himself, who had _not_ been meant to hear that, oops- but he didn’t hear whatever else he shouted, because he was already approaching the pin retrieval area and lowering himself carefully over the edge of the pit.

Oh. …Huh.

The top of his head was still at ground level, and unless there was something very wrong with his depth perception, his feet were already halfway down. He fumbled a tape measure out of his pocket- a scientist should never be caught without the ability to measure things- and sure enough, top to bottom, the pit was only about ten feet deep! Also, when his tape measure landed at the bottom, it knocked over something resembling a lamppost. “Shoot, sorry about that,” he said, although the tiny citizens of the tiny city probably didn’t speak English. He would have liked to stay and test a few more things- maybe even try to communicate for real- but they were starting to point at him and shout in tones that didn’t sound happy, and he decided he’d better leave before he scared them too much.

When he emerged into the bowling alley again, he barely registered everyone’s surprise that he was still alive in his excitement to show them what he had discovered. “I’ve done some tests,” he explained, “and the underground city- it’s not what you think!” He waved, already turning back around. “Everyone, follow me!”

The crowd had some difficulty with that, given the amount of people present and the size of the pin retrieval area, but they managed. Once they were all gathered around, he grinned at them and climbed down into the city to various gasps and exclamations, first of horror, then of confusion.

“Behold!” He spread his arms above the miniature buildings of the miniscule city, which he’d been careful not to step on in his descent. “This is _not_ an enormous city far below the earth. It is a very _small_ city about _ten feet_ below the earth, populated by tiny people, who have had to spend a year slowly climbing the ten feet to our world!” He gestured to the spires which had seemed so huge at first glance, but in fact were not even two feet tall. “We have nothing to fear!”

Above him, people murmured in disbelief and exchanged shocked expressions. In the scientific community, those were some of the best compliments there were. Carlos smiled up at them, basking in a mystery finally solved and paying the city he was standing in no more attention than was required to avoid accidentally crushing its infrastructure.

He had some regrets about this when the tiny people gave the loudest war cry they were collectively capable of and attacked him.

It was a stupid mistake, he thought with strange clarity, stumbling to the side under the sheer quantity of tiny projectiles and explosives being launched at him. He should have considered that, if the people of this very small city _were_ hostile, they would have been preparing to fight giants for the past year. Oh, that was a lot of blood, his clothes were definitely ruined. It was a good thing he hadn’t yet changed into that outfit he picked out for… oh, no, the _ceremony._ Cecil was going to be so disappointed that he wasn’t there.

Carlos did not consider himself an especially strong or brave person. He was a scientist, not a warrior. He’d always sort of wondered what he would do in a situation where his life was at stake. The answer, as it turned out, was fall to his knees and curl into a defensive ball without even thinking of trying to fight back. At least he was learning something from this. His thoughts were muddled with adrenaline, but a worrying question came into his mind, and he tried to remember how much blood people could live without and compare it to how much was soaking through his clothes. He didn’t get very far. “The amount absorbed by a T-shirt” is a standard unit of liquid measurement in _very_ few places.

He must have blacked out at some point, because when he opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of the bowling alley, he couldn’t remember how he got there. His lab coat was spread out under him and his shirt had disappeared completely. When he looked down, he saw himself covered in dozens of small wounds, freshly cleaned. He took a deep breath and coughed painfully, and then Teddy Williams appeared in his field of vision, offering him a bottle of water and advising that he not try to stand up just yet. Apparently, he’d been able to help Carlos because he was also a doctor, and this had something to do with his being the owner of the bowling alley. It didn’t seem like a good time to question that.

“Just keep everything clean,” he advised, “and you’ll be fine in a few days. Looked a lot worse than it was, really.”

“What… what happened?” Carlos asked, after drinking some water and feeling a little more clearheaded.

Teddy nodded to his left with a grave expression. “The Apache Tracker went in after you. Carried you out and everything, but… they got him in the head.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” he whispered. His throat felt raw. He took another sip of the water. It didn’t help. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t gone down there- I mean, just to prove a point, how _stupid_ is that- and now…”

“If it makes you feel any better, he knew what he was doing.” Teddy patted his arm, but stopped when he pulled away. “Or if it makes you feel worse, come to think. It’s just how it is.”

Carlos didn’t know how it made him feel. He didn’t know how he felt at all, other than sort of like screaming. After a few seconds of reflection, he decided that almost dying meant he’d probably earned that. He saw his shirt off to the side- completely ruined, but at least it could still be good for _something._ “Excuse me,” he said to Teddy Williams, and then he balled up the fabric and screamed into it until he ran out of air. He looked up again, breathing heavily. “Okay, I think I’m good now.”

Teddy nodded approvingly. “Nothing like a good scream after your first near-death experience. Anything else you need, just let me know.”

He shook his head and sat up cautiously. Moving was painful, of course, but it was a manageable enough pain to be outweighed by the desire to go home and change into clothes with less bloodstains on them. And… he had no idea what time it was now, but if it wasn’t too late, maybe he could still make it to see Cecil. The anxiety he’d been feeling about it earlier seemed so trivial now. “There are some other things I need to do,” he said to Teddy, as if to excuse why he wasn’t resting longer. “Important things. Thank you… and, uh, I’m sorry for calling you deranged earlier.”

“Don’t you worry about that, I’m sure I’ve been called worse by worse people. Go take care of those important things of yours.” He looked away at nothing in particular. “That’s the other thing about your first near-death experience. It really makes you think about what those _are.”_

Carlos went home in a daze. He didn’t entirely remember getting there, so it was lucky he hadn’t automatically walked to the lab instead. Everything he had been wearing went straight into the trash; he didn’t even want to think about trying to get all that blood washed out. He took a shower, used up all the band-aids in the house, and then stood in his bedroom, trying to convince himself it wasn’t as good of an idea as it currently sounded to give up on the rest of the day and just go to sleep. He was exhausted, and it would have been _really_ nice to lie down in bed and not move again until the next morning, but… no. Not yet. He tossed the Ceremony Outfit he’d laid out earlier back in the closet and pulled on jeans and a flannel button-up instead. Comfortingly well-worn, and… honestly, right now, he felt a little _safer_ with as much of his body covered up as possible, given how easily damaged it had recently proven itself to be.

Once he was dressed and as ready as he ever would be, he went outside, got in his car, and drove around town until he found somewhere quiet enough to let him think clearly. It wasn’t exactly the most romantic spot, but it was where he needed to be. He shut off the engine and texted Cecil.

_Meet me at the Arby’s parking lot as soon as you can, please,_ he typed with hands that only shook a little. _It’s important._

It was strange. As soon as that was done, he felt perfectly calm. Or maybe he just didn’t feel _anything,_ which wasn’t the same thing. It was hard to tell. He couldn’t back out anymore, though, and… that was that. Leaving his phone in the car without even waiting for a reply, he walked around and sat on the trunk. The sun was beginning to go down. Carlos reflected that, just maybe, the right time for it to do that was whatever time it happened.

He sat there like that- watching the sky, thinking about nothing, not moving- until another car pulled into the parking lot. Cecil stepped out of it and hurried over to stand in front of him. “What is it?” he asked, mysteriously out of breath even though he’d clearly driven there and not walked. “What- what danger are we in? What mystery needs to be explored?”

He didn’t look like he had stopped for a second in between reporting the news and rushing over here to meet Carlos. The intricate makeup he’d applied so carefully around his eyes that morning was smudged badly, and whatever eclectic outer layer he had worn today, he’d left it behind at the station. Cecil was left looking somehow smaller than usual in just a brightly patterned shirt, which had been neatly ironed until his distressed hands started fidgeting with it. One of his buttons had come undone. Carlos was certain he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

“Nothing,” Carlos told him, shaking his head. “After everything that happened… I just wanted to see you.” He felt more settled already, even though Cecil clearly wasn’t- genuinely and not just in the strange, numb way he’d been coasting on so far. It was good to know… that he still existed, maybe. That even though it _felt_ like the world had changed completely and irrevocably, there were still things in it he could trust.

Cecil’s eyes widened, and he used them to stare at Carlos. “…Oh?” His voice wasn’t entirely steady. Carlos thought he might have sounded like that himself, if everything didn’t still feel sort of like a dream.

He looked at Cecil, and then he looked at the sunset. “I used to think it was setting at the wrong time,” he told him, indicating the latter. “But then I realized that time doesn’t work in Night Vale, and that none of the clocks are real. Sometimes things seem so strange, or malevolent, and then you find that, underneath, it was something else altogether. Something pure, and innocent.”

Cecil looked at the sunset, and then he looked at Carlos. “I know what you mean,” he said. The expression on his face was much more indecipherable than usual, which made Carlos think he probably did.

After that, neither of them said anything for a while. It wasn’t a decision either of them made or communicated, but it happened as if they had agreed on it. Cecil climbed up to sit next to Carlos on the trunk of his car, and they both watched the lights in the sky with intermittent glances sideways at each other. Carlos, hesitating surprisingly little, put a hand on Cecil’s knee. Cecil only startled for a moment before smiling and shifting closer- slowly, in case Carlos wanted to stop him, which he found he didn’t- and resting his head on his shoulder. The moment was perfect, so they held onto it as long as they could. The spell was only broken when Cecil’s phone lit up, a text from an intern letting him know the weather report was almost over and he was needed to finish his show.

“I… I’ll see you later,” said Carlos, reluctantly letting Cecil hop down from the trunk of his car.

“You have my number,” Cecil reminded him hopefully.

“Right. I’ll text you. Later. Or tomorrow.” Since he would probably fall asleep as soon as he got home.

“Okay. Good.” His voice came out soft. “I’ll be waiting.”

Carlos didn’t know how to express what he was feeling, so he just said earnestly, “I’m glad I decided to call you.” It was true, after all, and the best he could do at the moment.

They smiled at each other, and Cecil returned to his own car and drove back to the station. Carlos found he didn’t want to leave yet. He leaned back and watched the lights above Arby’s for just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first time i've ever stuck to a posting schedule the whole way through a fic look at me go
> 
> thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> scientific fact of the day: there is a high degree of positive correlation between kudos & comments you give this fic and my motivation to work on it :P
> 
> i'm also quantumducky on tumblr, if you happen to feel like interacting with me there!


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